


Night Vale Coffee

by Amelia Abernathy (authr2b)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Fluff, M/M, a couple really bad puns inspired by my friends, cecil works at star bucks, geeky carlos, totally fluff, with a little bit of the "does he notice me?" angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-19 16:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3616383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authr2b/pseuds/Amelia%20Abernathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil lives in the little town of Night Vale where the inhabitants follow much the same routine day in and day out. but one day, a handsome scientist to be appears and shakes things up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stranger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarshaDecamiro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarshaDecamiro/gifts).



> This is a combination of two requests, one was a cecilos coffee shop AU, and the other is a little scene that comes later on. I'm actually really surprised she cam up with this, because most of her ideas make me wish I had never been born. (See Attack on Panem)

Cecil had been working at the Starbucks on the edge of town since he was sixteen and had been an intern at the community radio station for just as long. He had been following the same routine for four years. 

Even the people kept the same routines. He and Dana only had to wait for their customers car to drive down the street or see them walking over for them to start the order. They now had it where the drinks were pretty much done by the time the patrons paid up. 

Until one day, a handsome young stranger moved into Night Vale. He made his first appearance at Ceci’ls workplace during down time and caught Cecil doodling on Dana’s leg with a sharpie. They both clamoured to their feet, and Cecil took the register.

“Hi, how can I help you?” He asked the stranger. 

“Um, iced mocha frappachino please.” the man replied. 

“Anything else?” Cecl asked. 

“Um, I think that’ll be it.” the man replied. Cecil pulled out a cup and asked what name to call. “Carlos.” the man replied. Cecil nodded and made a point to write his name neatly on the cup. 

“So, Carlos,” Dana started, leaning over the counter to talk to the man, “What brings you to the middle of nowhere?” Carlos smiled, and both baristas felt their hearts skip a beat.

“I’m going to be starting at the community college in a couple months.” he replied. 

“So you’re moving here?” Dana asked, shocked and excited at the same time.

“Yeah, I’ll be here for the next few years.” Cecil could have done a little dance. 

“We’re actually students at the college right now, maybe we’ll see you around campus.” Cecil said, handing the cup to Dana so she could make the drink. 

“Maybe, what program are you in?”

“We’re in the communications program, we plan on going into radio.” Carlos shook his head.

“I’m in the science program, and i think they’re on different sides of the campus, but I plan on spending a bit of time here. My air conditioning unit is broken and I refuse to stay at my apartment until it gets fixed. So, I’ll see you here. unfortunatly I have to go back to my over heated apartment to finish unpacking.”

“Well, have fun with that.” Cecil said. Carlos laughed.

“I’ll try.” Dana leaned over the counter and gave him his drink. “Thank you, see you around.” Carlos said before walking out. Cecil waited for Carlos to get out of sight before turning to Dana.

“Did you hear that? He’ll be here! Everyday!” Dana nodded.

“It’ll be nice to have some Eye candy around here.” she agreed.


	2. Make a Change

Carlos did come in every day, and never quite at the same time. It always depended on the temperature of the day. One of the days where the low was ninety five degrees, he showed up when Cecil was opening the store, and stayed there all day long, buying a fresh cup of coffee every few hours. 

Then when they were busy, he would come in and give them some name from pop culture when they were to busy to think beyond writing the name down. In the two weeks, they called him Starlord, Lord Voldemort, Batman and “The Doctor.” 

One day he he placed his order and gave a normal name, and Cecil ended up yelling “Iced Americano for Steve Rogers!” and two seconds later realized what Carlos had done. He laughed so hard that he doubled over and couldn’t breath for a minute.

Cecil enjoyed every minute he had off when Carlos would come up to the counter and chat with him and Dana about books and movies. 

Cecil realized that he was starting to fall for Carlos. He confided in Dana and asked for advice. She shrugged and told him she didn’t know anything about relationships. 

 

School started not long after Cecil realized his feelings. And Carlos spent less time in Starbucks and more time in the labs at school. Dana and Cecil began working less hours during the weeks while they interned at the community radio station, which meant Cecil got even less chances to talk to Carlos. 

One day, after hearing Cecil whine about it for an hour while they were stuck in the booth, Dana snapped and whacked him upside the head with her text book. 

“Woman up!” She cried, “For christ’s sake! His AC unit is still broken, and we work all damn day Saturday and Sunday! You’ll get to see him. Try asking him for his email or phone number or something! God!” she slumped back in her chair and pushed off to grab her buzzing phone from the table behind her.

“You’re right!” Cecil said, suddenly inspired by her suggestion. “I’ll ask him for his email address, even though regular people don’t do that any more, and see if he wants to chat some time!” Dana looked up. 

“Wait, chat? You mean you haven’t friended him on facebook yet?” she asked incredulously.

“He has a facebook?” Cecil asked. Dana flicked at her phone screen a few times and flipped it around to show him Carlos’s profile. “why didn’t I think of that?” Cecil muttered, awkwardly half-lifting himself out of the chair so he could pull his phone out of his back pocket.

Cecil friended him as soon as he possibly could, and anxiously refreshed his page every ten seconds to see if Carlos had accepted his request yet. Ten minutes later, he did, and Dana had to put up with her friend dancing around the booth. 

Cecil and Carlos chat online well into the night, having debates about the viability of this or that Harry Potter theory. When Cecil finally went to bed, he made the decision to ask for Carlos’s number as soon as he could, what could it hurt?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was with Marsha's sister at a starbucks and when I asked what she'd gotten she said a Steve Rogers, and like two seconds later, while I was still pondering what she meant, the barista called out Iced Americano.


	3. Numbers

The next day was stifling hot, and Carlos once again was waiting outside the door of the store when Cecil opened. Carlos slipped inside, already sweating. “Why is the only affordable college in the state in the hottest place on Earth?” He asked once inside. 

Dana shrugged sympathetically. “I don’t know.” she answered. Carlos ordered a straight espresso shot and an iced coffee. he downed the espresso in one gulp and shuddered, and Cecil understood, that stuff was potent when concentrated.

“Carlos, as much as we love your patronage, it’s been like, two months since you moved here, shouldn’t your unit be fixed already?” Dana asked. Carlos nodded.

“It is, but it’s a window unit and I had it running on high all night last night cause it was so damn hot, and it froze up, so now I’ve got to wait for it to thaw out.” Carlos explained. Dana nodded.

“Yeah, that happens all the time to my mom. She refuses to get anything else, and my brother and I have to check in on her every now and then to make sure she hasn’t gotten a heatstroke.” Dana said. “If you weren’t living in an apartment building I’d say buy something a bit more permanent, but maybe invest in fans, that way you can can at least have a breeze.” 

“That’s a good idea. I’ll have to get some.” Cecil handed Carlos his coffee, and Carlos walked off to his usual booth. 

Dana lightly kicked Cecil’s shin and looked pointedly between Cecil and Carlos, and mouth “number, email, something!” at Cecil, but Cecil had lost every bit of his courage. 

Every now and then Cecil would think he could do it, but he just ended up turning around when he saw how perfectly the light framed Carlos’s profile.

Carlos left half-way through the day after he got a call from a lab-mate about the experiment they’d been working on. Cecil waited until Josie had left to start groaning about him botching his chance to exchange numbers with Carlos. 

He went on for ten minutes, never seeing Dana bang her head against the counter.

 

After work they both biked home to the apartment they had been sharing sinc Cecil's mother had passed away. 

"Here's a thought," Dana said, throwing her bag on the couch, "let's invite him over for dinner. I'm sure he'd like to eat somewhere that isn't Starbucks or a shitty apartment without proper AC." 

"That sounds like a wonderful idea, but you ask him. I can't do it." Cecil replied. Fans groaned.

"Fine! Jesus." She said, rolling her eyes. 

 

When Carlos came in the next morning, Dana immediately offered the invitation for dinner, catching him quite off guard. 

"Are you sure? I wouldn't be intruding on your family?" He asked her, Dana grinned.

"Oh, Cecil and I are roommates, it'd just be the three of us." She explained. Carlos thought it over while Cecil fixed his drink. 

"Okay, but I won't be free for some time..."

"Just let us know when you have some time and we can arrange something." Dana grabbed a piece of paper that they kept by the phone, "Here, let me give you our numbers. This one is Cecil's cell and this one is mine." She handed him the paper. Carlos looked down at the numbers and nodded.

"Great, thanks." He smiled at her and left after Cecil gave him his coffee.

Cecil waited until Carlos was down the block before pouncing on Dana

"WHAT WAS THAT?!" He demanded.

"What was what?" She asked innocently. "I gave him both numbers in case he couldn't reach me."

"I meant giving him YOUR number! Seriously, I called dibs!" Dana laughed.

"Yeah, that wouldn't have been suspicious at all. "Here's Cecil's number. No way am I trying to hook you up with my friend." Cecil, he's hot, but I don't want him. I promise when he texts me with his number, I'll let him know you are the better one to text since you've always got your phone in your back pocket." She waved him off, "So chill, Josie should be here soon and you can't be all bitchy when she gets here." 

 

Later that night, Carlos finally got around to texting the two of them so that they could have his number. 

Dana immediately replied with “cool, can i ask something personal?” 

“Yeah, go for it.” Carlos said, expecting her to ask about his parents or how he was paying for shcool and an apartment.

“Are you into guys or girls or neither?” she asked. 

“Where is this coming from. And both, I guess, never had much time for dating.”

“Cecil’s got the hots for you, and he’s to big of a wimp to act on it.” Carlos blushed while he read the text. 

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“Because if you wanna make the first move that would be awesome, I can’t do it for ya’ll but you sure as hell can. but don’t let him know I told you, kay? I’d have to hear him bitch about it for hours.” 

Carlos sat and started at the messages, and smiled. The cute barista with the beautiful voice was into him? Sweet.

“I won’t, and I’ll I’ll even wait a bit to say anything to him so he doesn’t suspect you did anything.”

“That sounds fine, but he’s a bit on the clueless side so I doubt he’d figure out it was me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't mean to call Cecil stupid, but he would probably be to distracted by Carlos making the first move to even think that Dana had anything to do with it.


	4. Dinner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long overdue update! I had to write a 22 page assignment for my class.

Carlos texted Cecil a few nights later, asking if he and Dana were free the following Friday, since the experiment would be done thursday evening. Cecil told him they were and immediately went to work looking for a recipe that he could make that would impress Carlos. Dana was the one who thought to text Carlos to see what he did and didn’t like so that Cecil didn’t serve something Carlos couldn’t or wouldn’t eat. 

After Cecil finished banging his head against the wall in Dobby fashion, he continued looking for recipes.

The morning of the dinner, Cecil made Dana stay on the couch while he ran around cleaning everything. This wasn’t his best idea, as it left her with loads of time to text Carlos.

“You better ask this boy out, he’s about to explode.” she typed as Cecil scrubbed furiously at the kitchen sink.

“That sounds weird, what do you mean?” Carlos returned.

“I mean, he’s a big homo ball of anxiety.” 

“I’ve never seen him anxious before, what’s he like?”

“Hun, the reason you don’t see him anxious is because he’s anxious the moment he sees you.” She hit send and quickly followed with “He’s got it bad.”

“That is very flattering.” 

“If I were you, I’d ask him out from a distance. He’s very excitable and I’m afraid he’d break you if you were standing near him.” 

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Either that or he’d become a statue and not move one bit for a few minutes.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Dana was on the verge of replying when Cecil started whacking her gently with the broom. 

“We have to start dinner!” he said frantically, “But I’m not done so you have to do it!” she waved him off and walked to the kitchen, texting Carlos to let him know his soon-to-be-boyfriend was trying to get her to cook and she couldn’t cook.

 

Carlos grinned. It was a comfort to hear from Dana, who knew Cecil best, that he didn’t have to worry about a negative answer from Cecil. With that confidence, he began to consider his options for asking Cecil out.

 

After a few hours later, Carlos arrived to their apartment, which was practically spotless. Dana welcome him and shepherded him towards the living room. She apologized for not having a proper dining room, but Carlos dismissed it, reminding her he’d been eating Big Rico’s off of a lab table for the last few weeks, and that a couch sounded wonderful compared to that.

Carlos sat down on the couch next to Dana, he was sure that Dana would have sat down in the armchair to force Cecil to sit next to him, but there was a large, fluffy, black cat stretched out over the cushion, making it rather hard to sit down. 

Cecil came in a moment later with a pot of soup and placed it on the table. 

“I’m sorry it’s a mess.” Cecil said, his face a light shade of pink. “But Khoshekh decided he wanted to fool around and we didn’t have time to fix everything.” Carlos shrugged.

“It’s fine. I can promise you that it’s better than my place. I think I’ve cleaned it once in the past two months. Maybe.” 

Dana held up two bowls for Cecil to ladle their dinner into and said “Well, I’m sure Cecil would give you a hand. He just loooves to clean.” She remarked. Carlos hid a smile and Cecil tried not to be obvious about glaring at her, but there wasn’t much that he could handle in a subtle manner. 

Cecil changed the topic to ask Carlos what he thought about the latest release for a running manga. 

The conversation went on until Dana brought up a new Anime that had appeared on Netflix, and that her classmates told her was wonderful.

“What’s it called?” Cecil asked.

“Attack on Titan. They said the characters are wonderful.” She answered.

“We should watch it.” Carlos suggested, “If I’m not being to forward by suggesting it.” Dana shook her head and Cecil reached for the remote so that they could begin watching the show.

 

Half an hour later they were left staring at the screen, vaguely horrified. 

“I never want to watch it again and yet i want to continue watching it at the same time…” Carlos muttered.

“Same.” Dana and Cecil whispered. 

After another moment, Dana snapped out of it and turned to Carlos. “Well, it’s getting late, you should probably go home. You have class early, right?” That snapped Carlos and Cecil out of their haze as well. 

“Yeah.” Carlos said. He put his bowl on the coffee table and stood. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.” They walked him out of the building and waved as he made his way down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me for the Attack on Titan thing. I just can't get it off my mind.


	5. Silliness

Cecil smiled as they cleaned up, “That was fun.” He said. Dana nodded.

“Yeah, maybe we should all aim for a day off next weekend so we can curl up with pastries and watch the rest of that show.” She said. Cecil picked up Carlos’ bowl and froze.

“He forgot his phone!” Cecil exclaimed. “How did he manage to forget his phone?” Dana looked over and shrugged. 

“He normally comes in during our shift tomorrow, we can give it to him when he comes in.” Dana said with a sigh. Then her face lit up with a mischievous grin. “But maybe we should do something to it first.” Cecil held the phone ot his chest, a tad frightened by Dana’s face.

“Like what?” He asked. Dana walked over and pulled the phone far enough away to see what brand it was. 

“Well, it’s an iPhone. You don’t need the code to access the camera. We can take silly pictures.” She whipped around and grabbed Khoshekh from the couch, draped him over her head, and made a duck face. “Do the thing!” She insisted through her puckered lips. Cecil laughed and took the picture and she tossed Khoshekh to the side. 

“Now gimme! Let’s fill his memory with silly pictures.” She giggled. 

It took them two hours to stop taking pictures. 

Some were selfies where they made odd faces, some where of one of them doing silly things, and a few pictures even showed them cross dressing.

 

They didn’t realize that a few blocks down, Carlos was on his iPad, giggling at the pictures that were coming through the cloud. 

Eventually they got tired of taking pictures, and sat down to plan more mischief. “We should totally change all of his contact pictures to us and Khoshekh.” She giggled. 

I agreed. “But how are we going to get the pictures on?”Cecil asked. “It’s locked, remember?” Dan thought for a moment before reaching over.

“Worth a shot.” She muttered. She slid the “screen” and it opened straight up. “that was eas- oh my goodness.” 

They stared at the wallpaper, which was a picture of a small note that read “Cecil, will you go on a date with me?” Cecil turned redder than Big Rico's sauce. 

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” Dana asked, stunned that Carlos would chose this way to ask her friend out. Cecil nodded and gave her the phone. 

“You make the changes.” He muttered before leaving, collecting his cat on the way out.

 

The next afternoon, Carlos arrived and Cecil gave him his phone. 

“I swear, we didn’t do anything weird with it.” Cecil explained. Carlos shrugged and shoved it in his back pocket.

“I believe you, thanks for bringing it back.” He said with a smile. He ordered his coffee and walked off to wait for his beverage.

He waited until he was out of sight of the cafe to stop and look at his phone for Ceci’ls possible reply.

It wasn’t hard to find. 

The not he had used as his wallpaper, had been replaced with another note saying “It would be my pleasure- Cecil.”


	6. Happily Ever After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just decided to wrap it up with this. Thank all of you so much! 
> 
> I don't believe I have anything Cecilos planned by way of Fan Fics for the next bit, but I am surrently taking requests for Night Vale and Attack on Titan at my tumblr blog authr2b. 
> 
> If you want to make a request, read the rules and AU list and message me!

they went on their first date a week later. that date led to another, which led to another, which led to yet another, which led Cecil to Carlos’s bed, and made him late for work the next day.

since Night Vale was a small town, news travelled fast, but considering Cecil and Carlos were the only two openly gay men in town, they all knew it was just a matter of time, and went on with their lives with a smile on their face. 

Cecil smiled even wider at work, and even Old Woman Josie, who was nearly blind, could see that the two dorks were head over heels for each other. 

And even the grumpiest of the citizens gave Cecil a break when he spent a tad too much time talking to Calros while they were in line.

 

Time seemed to pass quicker for the next year, or at least, that’s how Carlos and Cecil felt. 

And it was on the first anniversary of their first date, that Carlos proposed to Cecil, who of course said yes. 

The inhabitants half wished the boys hadn’t eloped, they wanted to know what a gay wedding was like, but neither of the boys had much by way of family, so neither saw the need for a big fancy wedding.

Carlos moved in with Cecil and Dana, since their apartment was much nicer than the one he had been living in, and Dana didn’t care. He had practically moved in six months to her mind.

 

They graduated from college another year later, and Carlos decided to continue on as a professor at Night Vale Community College. Cecil and Dana began working full time as soundboard managers at the community radio station. 

Life had once again become a day in day out schedule, but Cecil found that, between Carlos and Dana, he was able to bear it tolerably well. Them and the fact he no longer had to fix lattes for the entire town.

 

One day he was cuddling with Carlos, when he received a call from management.

Leonard Burton, the current voice of the show had been killed in a car crash, and they wanted Cecil to take over. He kept his cool while he talked business with management, but the moment he hung up, he was dancing around the living room.

 

Leonard’s death was a shame, he was the voice of their town, but it was one of those moments where you acknowledge his passing with a moment of silence, then tune in your radio.

 

Cecil didn’t start until monday, and Carlos remembered just in time to rush over to the radio at the far end of his lab, and blare the show, tuning in just in time to hear Cecil say “Welcome, to Night Vale.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS FOR READING!


End file.
